Talking about best and worst weapons for salmon, here my thoughts:
In my opinion the worst is the Octobrush. Brushes always have a bad time against salmoids due to lack of range and damage BUT the inkbrush has its incredible speed that let you catch eggs quickly and bring them to basket. Therefore, you can use the high speed to dodge salmonids, rescue teammates and crush smalfries in the meanwhile. You absolutely must avoid to fight large group of cohocks because you literally can't splat them before they hit you. Grillers are the only real counter to inkbrush, but at least you can run around and squish smallfries. On the other hand, the Octobrush has more damage,less mobility and way greater ink consumption. Sadly, this more damage is still not enough to splat large groups of salmonids without using the whole inktank (you almost need entire inktank to take down steel eel or scrapper; range and damage is still too low for killing stellheads in one round) and the reduced mobility ruins what makes the inkbrush usable. Running around is less effective due to large consume of ink.
I agree about the range blaster, but at least it does good damage.
The best, after last shift, im pretty sure are the DAPPLE DUALIES. Their damage and fire ratio is INSANE and let you destroy in a literal SECOND Steel eel, scrapper and even a drizzlers (after a roll). They also have good mobility, dodge rolls and a low ink consume. The best recipe for being a salmonid killing machine. Group of Cohocks get melted in a istant.
It has low range you said? this is actually not a big deal, even against Steel heads if you position yourself in the right spot you can take them down in an istant, unless there are other salmonids around. In that case clear the area and try at the next bomb.
Low range like brushes, but greatly compensated by insane damage output.
Ever tried it against Goldie seek wave? When it pops out from the gusher, dodge roll belove it and.... BAM it's raining eggs! Second only to dynamo.
tl, dr: brushes are bad but the inkbrush at least can do nice support job thanks to its speed.
Dapples caused salmonid extinction